In a stark departure from the sometimes embellished world of property listings, one auctioneer has taken a brutally honest approach to selling a house with a tragic past. A semi-detached home in Burnley, Lancashire, where a mother and daughter were brutally murdered, has been listed for sale with the blunt disclosure: 'The previous owner was murdered inside.'
A Home Frozen in Time
The three-bedroom property on Reedley Road has remained boarded up and eerily untouched for nearly five years since the horrific events of September 2020. Photographs on the Rightmove listing reveal the devastating aftermath of a fire, with charred rooms and the victims' personal belongings still piled inside, never cleared away.
The living room and a bedroom, where the bodies were discovered by police, show significant fire damage. The kitchen and bathroom sustained heavy smoke damage. The house was due to be sold at auction last month with a guide price of £125,000, a figure heavily discounted due to its condition and history.
The Callous Crimes of Shabaz Khan
The victims were Dr Saman Mir Sacharvi, 49, and her 14-year-old daughter Vian Mangrio. They were murdered by their handyman, Shabaz Khan, then 57, in a premeditated attack motivated by financial gain. Khan, a married father-of-four, drugged the pair by mixing diazepam into wine and fruit smoothies.
He then strangled Dr Sacharvi with a ligature. Vian's body was so badly burned in the subsequent blaze that a pathologist could only state she died of asphyxiation 'on the balance of probabilities'. Khan then set fire to the house in a calculated attempt to cover his tracks and stage a murder-suicide.
Khan scrawled disturbing messages like 'my mum is evil' and 'this is a Covid house' on the walls to mislead investigators. He also attempted to make the deaths look like an electrical fire. His wife, Rabia Shahbaz, 50, was later sentenced to 30 months in prison for perverting the course of justice by providing him with a false alibi.
Justice Served and a Haunting Legacy
Khan's plan unravelled when police discovered around £27,000 worth of Dr Sacharvi's jewellery hidden in the loft of his own home. After initially blaming fictional ghosts named 'Robert and Rita' for the killings, he pleaded guilty to both murders.
At Preston Crown Court in June 2022, Mr Justice Goss sentenced Khan to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 34 years. The judge described the murders as "premeditated, callous and merciless" and motivated by financial gain.
Now, the property itself, a physical testament to the crime, seeks a new owner. The estate agent's decision to explicitly state the home's grim history marks a rare instance of transparency in a market where such details are often softened or omitted, leaving the future of the Burnley murder house uncertain.
